Trial ends after legal argument

The trial of a priest charged with the sexual abuse of two brothers in a Co Galway school in the 1970s collapsed at Galway Circuit Criminal Court yesterday.

The priest had denied 10 charges of sexual assault which were alleged to have occurred in 1970 and 1971 in the school.

Archbishop of Tuam, Dr Michael Neary, a witness for the prosecution, gave evidence on the third day of the trial.

The archbishop confirmed he had made a statement to Gardaí on Jan 19, 2006, in which he stated that at some time between Aug and Sept 1995 he had been informed that one of the alleged victims had made an allegation of abuse against a priest, claiming he had been sexually abused by him between 1969 and 1974.

He said the alleged victim called to see himself in the Bishop’s Palace in Tuam on Sept 4, 1995, to discuss the matter but had declined to name the priest involved.

The man eventually named his alleged abuser in May 1996 to another priest appointed by the archbishop to investigate the complaint. The man made a complaint to gardaí in 2006 and when his older brother was interviewed by gardaí in relation to that, he too claimed to have been abused by the same priest.

Following lengthy legal argument, Judge Rory McCabe directed the jury to find the accused not guilty on all charges and he walked free from court.